


Will You Walk Into My Parlour

by ophelietta



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: Doumeki is lurking in the background somewhere, F/F, F/M, Gen, Look ma no angst!, Multi, Tanpopo insisted on his own tag, all the awesome ladies just need to chill together and drink tea, but totally in keeping with canon levels of angst light, well okay maybe angst light
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 12:56:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10742154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ophelietta/pseuds/ophelietta
Summary: “You are Kunogi?” the woman asked. Her throaty voice suited her; it was honey and black velvet, caressing and dangerously amused. “You’re much less impressive than I was led to believe.”Himawari smiled, sweetly. “And you’re much ruder, for the Queen of Spiders, than Watanuki-kun led me to believe. I will have to scold him for not warning me.”The queen of spiders and an immortal mermaid girl pay Himawari a visit. In which there is tea, birdsong, pining, fish-shaped snacks, and odd new friendships bloom. A bridge between "Payphones" and "Pearls."





	Will You Walk Into My Parlour

They made an odd pair.

 

The woman was sleek in sable furs, and fragments of snowflakes in her hair melted as if they had found the sun. She moved fluidly in thigh-high leather boots that ended in towering stiletto heels. She was neither old nor young; her smooth skinned face should’ve been youthful, but there was a cunning gleam in those not-quite-human-shaped eyes. She was calculatedly careless, luxuriant almost to the point of contempt; her sable furs swallowed the light. Her beauty reminded Himawari, for a moment, of Yuuko.

 

The girl was a different story. She was dressed in beautifully tailored and fitted clothes - a soft pink pea coat draped around her hips like a dress, a silver scarf a shade darker than her extraordinary hair was noosed precisely around her throat - but she moved in them rather stiffly, mechanically, like a doll thrust into an outfit. Her head was tilted down, her eyes oddly blank as she stared down at her soft pink boots.

 

“You are Kunogi?” the woman asked. Her throaty voice suited her; it was honey and black velvet, caressing and dangerously amused. She took in Himawari’s mended skirt and slouching green cardigan, the thick woollen socks that puddled around her knees (her favourite studying outfit) with a few flicks of her heavy-lidded eyes. “You’re much less impressive than I was led to believe.”

 

Himawari smiled, sweetly. “And you’re much ruder, for the Queen of Spiders, than Watanuki-kun led me to believe. I will have to scold him for not warning me.”

 

One golden eyebrow was raised, held - and then miraculously, the woman let out a chuckle that was not entirely unpleasant, and some unspoken tension seeped out of the air between them.

 

(“You must be utterly polite to her,” Watanuki-kun had warned her. “Polite to the point of rudeness. I can’t say her bark is worse than her bite - her bite is particularly poisonous - but she respects people when they fight back. She’ll be prickly when she comes to see you; she likes having gifts showered on her, but hates anything that feels like a favour.”

 

“You know her so well,” Himawari had said - hoping that she managed to keep the longing from her voice.

 

“Well enough,” Watanuki-kun replied dryly, “to keep my lamps well-stocked with pipe foxfire.”) 

 

“Please, come inside,” Himawari said in a much warmer voice than before, standing aside from the doorway and allowing her guests to enter.

 

Again, the woman surprised Himawari by murmuring the ritual, “Pardon my intrusion” as she stepped through the thresh hold, and she was surprised even more when the silent, silver-haired doll girl softly echoed her - the word _mistress_ sprang to Himawari’s mind, and she tried to squash it - her _companion_ ’s words. But really, what were they to each other? Watanuki-kun had not been entirely clear; at times, actually, he could be infuriatingly vague in that cryptic, Yuuko-inspired fashion, but on this point he confessed that he simply didn’t know. There was something troubling about the almost-hungry way that the woman eyed the girl, and something almost equally troubling about the girl’s utter obliviousness to this watchfulness, as if she were wrapped in a grey fog. That “something” spoke of - of _possessiveness_ , and that possessiveness worried Himawari.

 

“My name is Kunogi Himawari,” she said, realising belatedly that although Watanuki had given these customers her name and address, it would still be polite to introduce herself.

 

“You may call me Jorougumo,” the woman said, with an air of bestowing a magnificent favour. Himawari’s mouth twitched, a little.

 

There was a silence that lasted a beat too long.

 

“Yao,” the girl said woodenly, and the silence picked up where it had left off before she disturbed it with that single syllable.

 

“If you’ll follow me,” Himawari said, leading them to her room, which was mercifully neat, and hanging their jackets on the hooks behind her door. She paused a moment - and then pulled the cushion stuffed with pipe fox fur and placed it on the ground next to her table. She chanced to look up at Jorougumo and caught something that looked like - approval? in those strange eyes, but out loud, Jorougumo huffed and said, “I see you are as boring as the shopkeeper.”

  
“As prudent, I like to think,” Himawari said serenely, nodding to the lamp of pipe fox fire - sent over on Doumeki’s last trip -  which she had kept burning ever since receiving Watanuki’s singular request. “Would you care for tea?”

 

“Tea would be permissible,” the Jorougumo said, sprawling on the cushion and looking as if she’d been there for years, “unless you have anything stronger?”

 

“I’ll fetch the tea at once,” Himawari said - amiability without irritation was the key - and again, there flashed that queer, brief look in Jorougumo’s eyes, approval mingled with respect, that disappeared as soon as it had come. Jorougumo busied herself toying with the pencils and pens that Himawari had left there while studying, doodling on the cover of one of Himawari’s notebooks.

 

The girl - Yao - was kneeling quietly, her posture exquisite as any tea ceremony instructor would demand. With her coat gone, Himawari could see that she was dressed in a cream-coloured turtleneck, and a grey skirt that flowed over her folded knees; in those soft clothes, she looked delicately wrapped up, like a gift that one wouldn’t dare to open. Himawari didn’t know what impulse moved her to do what she did next, but it was the right one, and she followed it, trusting it.

 

“This is Tanpopo,” she said, gesturing to the bird on his perch, who started awake at his name. He blinked at her sleepily, and gave a little “good morning” chirp even though it was the middle of the afternoon. “He is impudent sometimes, but he loves to meet new people,” Himawari added, tilting her head towards Yao. “Would you permit him to greet you?”

 

Yao’s head raised, and for the first time, a sort of light entered her eyes. Himawari made herself hold Yao’s gaze, instead of darting over to see what Jorougumo was making of this.

 

“I would like that,” Yao said, her voice rising perhaps a hair above a whisper. Tanpopo fluttered down from his perch and made short work of butting his head against Yao’s clasped hands so that she would have to pet his head. The light in her eyes brightened, grew, and seemed to spread across her face, like dye trailing through water. Something like a smile rose to her lips.

 

 _Crack_! Himawari and Yao both turned to stare at Jorougumo. She was rather foolishly clutching the snapped half of a mechanical pencil, the other half now rolling on the table top. Her eyes were very wide.

 

“Jorougumo-san,” Himawari said, “would you like to accompany me as I prepare the tea? It will only take a moment of your time, and Yao and Tanpopo can get better acquainted.”

 

“Of course,” Jorougumo said, clambering to her feet in the most graceless gesture Himawari had seen from her yet. Yao turned loving eyes back to her newfound friend, who was shamelessly serenading her.

 

Himawari waited. Jorougumo was silent all the way down the stairs, silent as Himawari filled the electric heater and took down three mismatched cups from a kitchen cupboard.

 

“What kind of tea would you and Yao-san like?” Himawari asked over her shoulder to Jorougumo, who had ignored the seat at the kitchen table that Himawari offered, and was still standing there, looking rather shell shocked. Her black silk sheath dress was a little… outlandish in the mundane kitchen light. “We have green tea, jasmine tea, white tea, Lady Jane Grey - “

 

“You.” The honey and velvet was gone from Jorougumo’s voice; she was tense as a piano wire. “What did you _do_? I heard you were a bad luck goddess, there is no way that you - what _witchery_ was that?”

 

Himawari’s hands lowered themselves from the open cupboard, bristling with boxes and snap-lidded containers of tea.

 

“I am not a goddess,” she said, slowly. “I am not a witch, either. Surely Watanuki-kun told you that I am human?”

 

“But - “ And for a moment that beautiful, fierce, elegant being - the one whose human shape seemed barely able to contain her essence - sounded so _lost_. “But she _smiled_.”

 

Himawari’s shoulders relaxed. “That would be Tanpopo’s victory,” she said, making her voice as light as she knew how. “He was made to - for a very specific purpose, and he is excellent at it.”

 

“To make people smile?” Jorougumo’s eyes were uncomfortably sharp.

 

No. To bring happiness and connection to lonely, cursed girls who are unable to make contact with the rest of the world.

 

Out loud, Himawari said, “Yes.”

 

~

 

When they returned, Himawari bore the tray filled with teapot, cups, saucers, and a plate of snacks, while Jorougumo, empty-handed, fumed away and attempted to unravel the mystery of the magic that had happened so effortlessly and which she still didn’t seem to believe was Tanpopo’s doing, not Himawari’s.

 

Yao was listening, very intently, as Tanpopo was telling her a story in chirps and trills, feather rustles and quick turns of his head. He ignored Himawari and Jorougumo as he entertained Yao, but Himawari knew that he was aware of their watching him, and that this was a subtle form of payback for all the times Himawari wasted studying instead of cooing over him. She wasn’t sure if it had anything to do with being a complex magical construct or not, or perhaps because he wished to counteract her often gloomy moods, but Tanpopo had acquired a very defined personality over the years they had been together. He could be charming when he wanted to be, but sulked like a diva when he felt he wasn’t being paid enough attention to.  

 

“That’s enough now,” she chided, interrupting him in mid-trill, as she set down the tray. “You must allow our guests have their tea now.”

 

Tanpopo gave a little grumbling cheep but lowered his wings, and then Yao astonished Himawari all over again by asking, a little breathlessly, “Oh, but Kunogi-san - may I feed him?”

 

Himawari felt oddly touched by that simple request. “Of course,” she said, bringing Tanpopo’s water dish and little turquoise seed tray onto the table. “If you gather up a few seeds in your palm and hold it out - yes, like that - he might even feed from your hand. His beak will prick a bit, but it shouldn’t hurt.”

 

Himawari busied herself with pouring the tea and passing around the cups but discreetly watched Jorougumo watching Yao and Tanpopo. There was a shade of that possessiveness in her eyes again - but there was also an almost unspeakable tenderness.

 

It gave Himawari hope.

 

Once Yao was done being enchanted by the spectacle of Tanpopo eating out of her hand, and he had flown back to his perch, she was able to apply to herself to her own tea. She looked at the snack tray, and that same almost-smile lit up on her face.

 

“I like taiyaki,” she blurted out. Her voice was still soft, but she seemed shocked at her own boldness, in speaking when no one had addressed her. “I mean… I… I like fish, and I know they are only _shaped_ like fish, but…”

 

“Please,” Himawari said, dimpling, pleased by another correct hunch, “have some.”

 

Yao began to munch away at one, while Jorougumo - satisfied that her charge was eating - poked a daifuku and said, her tone almost contemplative, “Looks just like the shopkeeper’s…”

 

“Watanuki-kun _did_ make them,” Himawari said, using his name deliberately. The shopkeeper this, the shopkeeper that - she smoothed down her face, hoping none of her irritation would show.

 

“You look like just like him when you do that,” Jorougumo said, suddenly.

 

Himawari blinked.

 

“Your face, and your - way. Some of your mannerisms. They are very like.” She seemed almost as embarrassed about speaking her observation as Yao had over her taiyaki confession. “You must be very close.”

 

For the first time that night, Jorougumo’s voice held no trace of mockery, challenge, or hostility. In fact, she sounded almost sincere.

 

“We were young together,” Himawari said, finally, not wanting to have to say - one way or another - whether she and Watanuki were still ‘close’.

 

Close enough to send overflow customers her way?

 

Close enough, her mind repeated.

 

When most of the snack plate had been demolished and everyone’s tea cups refreshed, Himawari decided it was time to make her move. Watanuki had given her a lot of license and kept his instructions deliberately open, but the time for acting merely on her intuition was done. She would have to act with purpose.

 

“Jorougumo-san,” she said, to the spider monarch who very subtly shifted so that it didn’t seem like she had drifted off while staring into the depths of her teacup, “would you mind taking Tanpopo to the living room downstairs? His favourite K-drama will be coming on soon.”

 

Jorougumo darted a glance between her and Yao, who was still contentedly demolishing the last of her taiyaki - Himawari gave the slightest of nods, and Jorougumo grumbled and got to her feet with considerably more poise than last time. Tanpopo hopped onto her outstretched finger, delighted to have another large personage to pay attention to him; Himawari had been quite strict in her instructions not to bother the other girls in the house when they were studying. Right now, though, they were out at the movies, and Tanpopo _did_ dislike watching his favourite series without having someone else to appreciate all his reactions.

 

“Oh, and Jorougumo-san?”

 

Jorougumo turned back on her heel with a roll of her eyes. “Yes, Kunogi-san?” she said, only a hint of sarcasm colouring her voice on the - _san_.

 

Himawari held up the abandoned fox fire cushion with a smile.

 

Jorougumo grabbed it with another grumble, and was gone.

 

And then Yao and Himawari were alone.

 

With a dab of anko paste at the corner of her mouth, a flush in her cheeks from birdsong, and the pipe fox fire flickering warmly around her, Yao almost looked like an ordinary young girl, cared for and caring. But there had been a chill in the air around her when she stepped into the house that had nothing to do with the winter night. Now that Tanpopo was gone and Himawari was staring at her with calm, steady eyes, she seemed to be retreating back into herself - her shoulders tensed by a fraction, her posture corrected itself, and her eyes dropped to the table top.

 

“Yao-san,” she asked, deciding that there were some questions that just had to be asked right away, “do you know why Watanuki-san sent you to me?”

 

It was astonishing, how swiftly that earlier blankness was returning to Yao’s eyes.

 

“He said you knew something of despair.”

 

 Well, Himawari thought, to counteract the feeling of having been punched in the stomach, you _did_ ask.

 

“Did he tell you how I came to be acquainted with it?” she asked, gently.

 

Yao hesitated - and shook her head.

 

Himawari told Yao of her curse neatly and simply, and tried not to think that the last person she had had to reveal herself to was Watanuki after he swan dived out of a classroom window, and how that had been far from neat and simple.

 

“… I do not understand,” Yao said, finally, once Himawari’s story had collapsed into its end, and she had paused to wet her throat with tea. “The shopkeeper implied that we had something in common, but you - you have your bird, Tanpopo. You have this house which you share with other people - I can sense their… warmth, their presence, filling it. You have the love of the shopkeeper.”

 

Himawari was silent. 

 

“I have lived far longer than you,” Yao said. Her eyes were opaque as pearls, and almost as hard. “I have lost more people in my life than you have ever loved. And the shopkeeper claims that you can teach _me_ something of despair?”   

 

She thought of a small yellow bird, born out of an unselfish wish and named after of a flower. Born from an egg out of which nothing was supposed to emerge.

 

“I think,” she said, gently, “that he wished I might teach you something of hope.”

 

 _Even though_ , she thought, _I - I am the one most in need of a lesson. I don’t know how you thought I was up to this Watanuki-kun, I don’t…_

 

Yao snorted, and for a moment, her face was as young and ancient and sad and cynical and full of longing as Jorougumo’s - as Yuuko’s - as Watanuki’s.

 

Perhaps even as Himawari’s.

 

“You are a child,” Yao said. The dishes on the table clattered as she rose. “I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to _go_.”

 

“All right,” Himawari said, peaceably. “No one is keeping you here against your will.”

 

Yao almost stepped on Himawari’s heels as she followed her to the living room where Jorougumo was draped on the sofa, nodding in amusement to everyone one of Tanpopo’s trills. She almost leapt up however, when she saw Yao’s face.

 

For such a frail-seeming girl, Yao did a very good impression of _stomping_ over to Jorougumo’s side and then clutching her arm.

  
“This woman,” Yao said, stubbornly ignoring Himawari, “she doesn’t understand anything. I want to go home _, now_.”

 

Something flit over Jorougumo’s face, then was gone. “All right,” she said. “We will. Run upstairs and fetch your coat first.”

 

A look of relief passed over Yao’s face, and she brushed by Himawari without a second glance.

 

Again, just like in the kitchen, Jorougumo looked at her with the strangest of expressions and asked, “What did you _do_?”

 

Himawari groaned, passing a hand over her face. “I am _sorry_ ,” she said, mortified. “I said something to offend her, and - “

 

“She called it ‘home’.” Jorougumo was staring off into a middle distance, something intent and inward-looking in her eyes. “She called my house ‘home’.”

 

And - because Himawari’s day could not get any stranger - Jorougumo dropped into what was unmistakeably a humble and absolutely sincere bow.

 

“I thank you,” Jorougumo said, straightening up, her eyes very bright. “You have done a wondrous thing here tonight. This debt will not go unpaid.”

 

“Debt? But I - “ Himawari felt like pulling out her hair. Tanpopo snickered at her, if birds knew how to do such a thing - at any rate, Tanpopo knew. “I didn’t _do_ anything - and it’s Watanuki-kun you owe, not I, and - “

 

“The magic you worked is yours,” Jorougumo corrected. “The payment goes to you.”

 

“Don’t… don’t worry about it,” Himawari said, feeling a little dazed. “Pay… whenever. Whenever you can. Just. Take Yao-san home?” She didn’t mean for it to come out as a plea.

 

“Yes,” Jorougumo said, her lips curving up faintly in a sweet and private expression - a smile that meant more than any showy fang baring of that evening. “I will take Yao home.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a reference to Mary Howitt's "The Spider and the Fly" (1829), the first line of which is oft-misquoted as "Will you come into my parlour?" I couldn't resist.
> 
> This is an old fic, posted for posterity. It's an odd sort of bridge between two other fics, taking place several years after “Don’t They Have Payphones Wherever You Were Last Night," and shortly after the opening of “Pearls That Were Her Eyes” (i.e. after the Crimson Pearl arc in xxxHolic). I sincerely have no idea if it makes any sense without having read those two stories! This will be a fun experiment for all! 
> 
> Also, LOOK LOOK IT’S NOT ANGST. XD This may be the most hopeful thing in the holic fandom that I’ve written. XD


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